Authorities in Moscow on Monday warned Washington that it would face “consequences” following a deadly Ukrainian strike on annexed Crimea that was said to have been carried out with U.S.-supplied long-range missiles.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Sunday’s strike on the city of Sevastopol “barbaric” and accused the United States of “killing Russian children.” Among the four people killed in the attack were two minors.
“The involvement by the United States, the direct involvement, as a result of which Russian civilians are killed, cannot go without consequences,” Peskov told reporters. “Time will tell what these will be.”
Peskov pointed to comments made by President Vladimir Putin earlier this month about Moscow arming countries so that they could potentially launch strikes against Western targets.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said it had summoned U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy in response to Sunday’s attack on Crimea.
It later issued a statement saying that Washington “bears equal responsibility with the Kyiv regime for this atrocity” and the strike would “not go unpunished.”
Russian authorities have said that the strike on Sevastopol was carried out with U.S.-supplied ATACMS missiles loaded with a cluster warhead. Moscow-installed authorities in Crimea said the weapons hit an area with recreational beaches and hotels.
Andriy Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said on Monday that “Russia must leave the peninsula.”
“Their army and military objects there must cease to exist,” he wrote on social media.
Similarly, Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, said Crimea was a legitimate military target.
“Crimea is also a large military camp and warehouse, with hundreds of direct military targets, which the Russians are cynically trying to hide and cover up with their own civilians,” he said.
